Learner engagement
Support for the quality enhancement of learning for learners
Student Participation in Quality Scotland (sparqs) is the SFC funded national development service for student representatives. sparqs works to assist and support learners, students' associations and institutions to improve the effectiveness of student engagement in quality processes. It also provides the Council executive with advice on student involvement.
As well as the services and training offered to colleges and universities, sparqs draws together the range of thinking, values, practices and activities relating to student engagement into a central resource.
Public information on quality
In addition to the information which institutions provide for current and potential students we currently contribute to the funding of the UK website Unistats, which offers searches, reviews and comparisons of official information about universities and colleges in the UK, and the subjects they offer. Unistats data also includes the results of the latest National Student Survey at www.thestudentsurvey.com/.
Public information is an important element in the ongoing updating of the quality arrangements and the possibility of Scottish participation in Key Information Sets (KISs, which are comparable sets of standardised information about undergraduate courses which institutions in the rest of the UK will publish from September 2012,) will be considered as part of that process.
Representatives of the SFC executive also attend meetings of the Higher Education Public Information Steering Group (HEPISG).